SC Arts Commision Grants Awards

Mark Kilstofte

Mark Kilstofte is admired as a composer of lyrical line, engaging harmony, strong dramatic gesture and keen sensitivity to sound, shape and event.

Currently teaching music theory and composition at Furman University in Greenville, Kilstofte studied with William Albright, Leslie Bassett and William Bolcom at the University of Michigan, where he was a Rackham Predoctoral Fellow and assistant conductor of the music ensemble “Contemporary Directions.” His music is performed regularly throughout the U.S. and Canada and in concert halls from Moscow to Bangkok.

Kilstofte’s works have garnered many awards including the Rome Prize, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship and the Charles Ives Scholarship, both from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has received the Aaron Copland Award three times, was named a South Carolina Arts Commission Music Composition Fellow in 2001 and a Fromm Music Foundation Commission recipient in 2006. His compositions, described as having an innovative approach to form, have also been featured on National Public Radio’s “Performance Today.”